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We’reTexas

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by We’reTexas

  1. Look, his equity commitment is just a piece of paper until he launches a tender. If he can access that cash on his own, it will involve selling a significant amount of stock that will drive TSLA down. And he’d also be on the hook for $1B in annual debt services. That doesn’t seem to be his ideal plan, as he has been shopping for equity commitments and by all accounts having trouble: in particular, BX, Vista and Brookfield have turned him down. So much for the Midas touch. SL (which by all accounts only advised him on the TSLA go-private) and Elliott are now adversarial. Their entire history of operating indicates they will protect their interests as stubbornly as possible. We’re about a fund that tried seize an Argentine battleship as collateral, after all. I don’t care either way what Elon does, I’m just trying to point out that just because he ostensibly has financing doesn’t mean he has Twitter’s board bent over.
  2. Yes, those are commitment letters. Did you actually read them? $21B is from an equity commitment, which is literally Elon committing $21B to himself. Does he have that cash? Matt Levine touched on this exact issue this morning, btw, and it looks like he may. Does he want to spend all his cash? I don’t know, but if you read the exhibits to the debt commitment letters and the equity commitment letter, they clearly contemplate rollover equity and new money from existing holders. The financing commitment letter references a draft OTP shared with the lenders yesterday, so he’s technically ready to go. But it’s not clear if he wants to go with the current financing arrangement.
  3. I’m not so sure. I took a quick look at the docs and he clearly contemplated signing up existing investors (and management?!) to the equity commitment, but he doesn’t have anything yet (and if he did, he should have filed those docs). It’s also unclear where his own cash would come from. So I may have missed it, but it looks like he still has some work to do. Edit: I’d add that he also clearly contemplates acquiring 50.1% of the company and approving the deal himself, so maybe this is the first step in pressuring investors to get in to preserve their power in the deal. But Elliott and Silver Lake won’t roll over easily.
  4. Well, we had just some from Sifnos, which to me is the ideal Cycladic island: quiet and sleepy, bleached-white towns tucked into the hills, secluded beaches and coves. All Greek islands are touristy, but the crowd was more French and Italian vacation homeowners. The beaches of Milos (and you go for the beaches) were packed, with the demographic being more young couples who couldn’t yet afford Santorini and backpackers who came to get a Sarakiniko pic for the ‘gram.
  5. Second Pollonia. Stayed at the Niki-Savaas Suites on the water and it was fantastic. Wasn’t overall a huge fan of Milos but Pollonia was a great town to relax in.
  6. There’s a lot to the calculus, but with decent 2/2’s in the SF metro and LA areas blowing past $1.5M down payments are becoming prohibitive. The idea is to buy into something accessible as an appreciation play and use the property as a rental or STR to largely offset the note.
  7. Well, not for all-cash buyers, which I’d guess comprise a substantial portion of absentee owners. But that does bring an interesting fold to the issue. I used to own in TX but went back to renting in CA. We’ve been looking into an investment property as something to build equity in and get back in the home owning game, but higher rates (and recent rates spike) are making it look unfeasible. Seen a few articles that this is an increasing trend among millennials.
  8. Get a food guide, many of the vendors have been there since the 80’s. Don’t sleep on the gospel tent. Seeing Big Freedia in the middle of the day is only weird for a little bit. Keep an eye out for Indians. Personally I get there early for the local acts and usually skip the headliners to beat the crowds and have some time to rest up before the night shows.
  9. To add on, I see two other similarities Austin has with SF: 1) zoning laws weighted way too heavily towards SFH and 2) a district-based city council, which for purposes of housing reform results in a bunch of NIMBY-finger point and no progress.
  10. I mean, I guess it makes sense that luxury housing would be commonly used as piede-à-terres in major cities, but that doesn’t detract from it being a problem. It’s just unclear to me how much of a problem it is. Vancouver and Oakland recently enacted vacancy taxes, but of course it’s impossible at this point to get a sense of their impacts. One issue that’s clear, though, is that many cities disincentivize renting so much that property owners would rather just pay the taxes. Also, progressive housing activists tend to overemphasize foreign investors as bogeyman to distract from actually building any housing.
  11. Oh for sure, I wasn’t trying to go that far but rather make the point that Texans feel the market forces more immediately and, in theory, should respond accordingly. Everyone wants their property values to increase, but when hit with a 10% increase year after year you’d think folks would support measures that would temper the climb a bit. When limited to 1%, not so much.
  12. Yes, totally agree. Not to mention other development issues (like efforts to block multi family housing near BART stops) or that Bay Area public transit was totally overwhelmed by the volume pre-COVID.
  13. In San Francisco (and most CA cities) there’s aggressive rent control and other tenant protections. You’ll often see stories about people subleasing from some old lady to pay 1980-level rents or packing up three generations in a one-bedroom in the Mission. A high minimum wage sort of helps. Prop 13 severely curtails property taxes, and until two years ago you could incredibly pass on your tax rate with your estate. In other words, SF manages it through market-distorting policies that make then problem worse in the long term. As to how working class people “do” it? I honestly don’t know - it doesn’t seem worth it to me, but I guess if it’s your home you just deal with it. You get used to paying more, and for homeowners you come to expect a rate of appreciation that justifies putting most of your wealth in your home. It’s that mentality transplanted to Austin that is fueling the craze, IMO. In defense of Texas, I do think the property tax regime makes sense. Homeowners immediately feel the sting of a rising market, prompting frank discussions over what to do about it (like this thread). Compare that to California, where Prop 13 allows homeowners all of the upsides of appreciation and no downsides, leaving the homeowner class indifferent to housing policy.
  14. Lotta Californian transplants surprised that property taxes can go up.
  15. And I’d be able to buy a house in CA.
  16. What @Vegas64means is that he would need to buy 90% of shares to effect a DE short form merger and effectively go private. The anti-takeover measures prevent him from doing so in the first place.
  17. No, institutional investors like Vanguard generally hold for the long term. That news is actually from a 13G amendment filed last week and indicates the trigger date was March 31 (the trigger being the purchase of 1% of outstanding securities). I’d guess the increase was responsive to ISS/Glass Lewis reports and other evaluations given it’s proxy season.
  18. Do you have any familiarity with working with Elliott, and have you followed any of the Twitter saga over the past two years? Elon wants Twitter to be his. That would never happen with those sponsors. Sure, maybe with others, but I’d have a hard time seeing Elon as being anything but a red flag.
  19. Why on earth would Silver Lake and Elliott join him? They just staged a proxy fight two years ago in attempt to oust one impetuous tech billionaire - why would they yield any voting power and directorships to another who has no interest in the economics of a deal and no horizon to sell?
  20. I doubt Silver Lake would want that deal. What a terrible idea - Twitter would be dead without the ability to offer broad based equity comp to its employees.
  21. Matt Levine is great, but he tends to get things wrong when he plays securities lawyer. What I was saying is the below tweet indicates Musk had been discussing a board seat for weeks. That type of discussion would resulted in a 13D obligation from the outset and would have needed to be disclosed. Musk just has a shitshow of a personal staff, it seems.
  22. I’m not sure I follow this, but his initial 13G filing was eye-raising given his history. It was also strange that his initial filing was 9.2%. The filing threshold is 5% and there’s an amendment requirement for the acquisition of 1% of outstanding shares - we now know he just busted it, but at face value he would have somehow had to have moved 5% of Twitter in one day. When Twitter’s CEO announced the board seat, he mentioned discussions had been going on for weeks. It’s pretty clear he should have always had to file a 13D, and those negotiations should have been disclosed. Edit: He did this in his personal capacity, so he couldn’t rely on TSLA counsel. But presumably at this point he knows this and is staffed up. Given he stopped at 9%, I assumed he did so on advice to avoid becoming a Section 16 filer.
  23. David O is a legend. Yes, agree but if you know you want to practice in Texas and wanted to avoid >$200k in debt, UT Law would make sense as many Ivy grads could roll in with substantial scholarships.
  24. Austin is basically there. I mean obviously not if you really number crunch, but subjectively listings like that give me the same “WTF” feeling I get when I see 800 sq ft 2/1s asking $1.5M in SF. Just nonsensical. Edit: and to add, if I had to pick, I’d feel better about buying in SF or many parts of LA right now.
  25. At least his arm wasn’t ripped off as he was carjacked by a 17 year old out on bail for armed robbery.
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